Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of the series Breathless, dies at the age of 88 | Jean Paul Belmondo

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French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, who became world famous in the classic “New Wave” film “Breathless” by Jean-Luc Godard, has died at the age of 88. The representative’s lawyer confirmed the news to AFP.

Belmondo—nicknamed Pebble by French audiences—became one of the country’s biggest box office stars in the 1960s and ’70s, his faltering face in contrast with those of his onetime rival and partner Alain Delon. Like Dillon, Belmondo was a key figure in the preeminent generation of European filmmaking at the time, with the series of films he made with Godard – which included A Woman Is a Woman and Pierrot le Fou – making an indelible mark.

Born in 1933 in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, the son of sculptor Paul Belmondo, Belmondo attended a series of elite private schools but was weak. Showing more interest in sports, he embarked on a short career in amateur boxing as a teenager. After contracting tuberculosis, he became interested in performing, and applied to the elite National Academy of Dramatic Art, eventually winning a place in 1952.

After graduation, Belmondo began acting in the theater, appearing in plays Anouelle, Video and George Bernard Shaw. He also had a series of small film roles: in one of them, Marc Allegrett’s 1958 comedy, Un Drôle de Dimanche, Godard spotted him who was still a critic at Cahiers du Cinéma. He was cast by Goddard in a 12-minute short film, Charlotte and Her Boyfriend – described as “A Tribute to Cocteau”, and consisted of Belmondo’s boisterous character in his girlfriend’s hotel room. (The voice was provided by Godard himself, after Belmondo had been drafted into the army for service in Algeria.)

Before Goddard could gain an advantage on Earth, fellow critic Claude Chabrol was cast as Belmondo in his 1959 thriller Double Tour (AKA Web of Passion), in which he played the friend of a murder victim. The character’s name, Laszlo Kovacs, will be repeated in Breathless as a malicious joke. But it was Godard, filmed in the late summer of 1959, that secured Belmondo’s rise as the enigmatic face of the French New Wave. Based on treatment by François Truffaut and Chabrol, Breathless was inspired by the real-life activities of killer Michel Portail. Much has been written about the unconventional production of Breathless, with Godard writing new dialogue each day, shooting without lighting to allow for spontaneity; Belmondo responded brilliantly to Godard’s tactics, and the film was a huge commercial success upon its release in 1960.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Laura Antonelli in Cannes in 1971. Photo: Gilbert Tourette/Jama-Ravo via Getty Images

Belmondo also took on more visible roles: in Classe Tous Risques, also released in 1960, he played a young gangster who helps an armed thief escape with his children to Paris. However, Breathless’s success propelled him into the spotlight and he quickly became an international star, appearing in Peter Brooke’s Moderato Cantabile and playing opposite Sophia Loren in Two Women, from Italian director Vittorio De Sica.

But – like Delon – he preferred to focus on French cinema, extending his relationship with Godard with the fourth-wall-breaking “Woman is a Woman” in 1961, and developing another with Jean-Pierre Melville, a favorite of New Wave critics, who had a fantastic role in Breathless. . Belmondo played a sexy and mysterious clergyman in Leon Moran, Priest of Melville in 1962, followed by Melville’s Le Dolos in 1963, in which he played a thief suspected of being a detective.

Belmondo specialized in playing gangsters and people of low spirits, though he had a hit in 1962 with Kartosz, playing a corrupt eighteenth-century swordsman opposite Claudia Cardinale. That Man from Rio – a parody of Françoise Dorliac – was a hit with the same director Philippe de Broca, and was more in tune with Belmondo’s populist tastes; Describing Cantabile as “too boring,” Moderato told the New York Times in 1964, “I’d rather make adventure films like Rio than the intellectual films of Alain Resnais or Alain Robbe‐Grillet.”

Belmondo with Catherine Deneuve at The Mermaid in Mississippi

After giving up acting for a year in 1967-198, Belmondo returned to work but at a less aggressive pace, making films for Truffaut (Mississippi Mermaid), Claude Lelouch (Love Is a Funny Thing) and Jacques Deray (Borsalino) – though She fell out with co-star Dillon over billing in the latter film. Following Dillon’s example, Belmondo moved behind the camera, producing films for Chabrol (Dr. PoPaul), de Broca (The Man from Acapulco) and – ironically – René, in the form of the Stavesky political drama of the 1930s.

Belmondo maintained a string of famous successes in France until the mid-1980s, with comedies, action films, and crime dramas, but his production began to slow down towards the end of the decade, returning to the stage, performing in Cyrano de Bergerac and Jean-Paul Sartre Kane. His most famous film role in the ’90s was Loach’s adaptation of Les Misérables, while he reunited with Delon in Une Chance Sur Deux in 1998, neither of which was sure who Vanessa Paradis’ father was.

In 2001, he was hospitalized due to a stroke, and no film was released until 2009 A Man and His Dog, which did not hide the effects of his condition. In June last year, he was seen attending the funeral of comedian and screenwriter Guy Bedos in Paris.

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Three weeks ago, he was photographed smiling at a party for his 88th birthday with a number of his children and grandchildren, including his youngest daughter Stella, who is 17 years old.

Belmondo was married twice, to fellow actor Elodie Constantin between 1952 and 1968, and dancer Natti Tardeville from 2002 to 2008. He also had a number of high-profile relationships, including with Ursula Andrés in the late 1960s, Laura Antonelli, with whom he co-starred Dr. Popol, in the 1970s, and nightclub owner Barbara Gandolfi, whom he divorced in 2012.

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